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The Watchtowns
The Watchtowns are one of Efre's most impressive and notorious monuments. Encapsulating an area over 7000 square miles in area, the actual towns themselves only exist on the periphery of the vast amount of land, along a massive wall approximately 300 miles in circumference. The towns are built into the very wall itself, starting from great fortress gatehouses and spilling out onto the land outside the wall as if buildings and people had fallen off the top in a heap. The impression a visitor gets to one of the Watchtowns is of great heaps of urban moss clinging to the side of sheer stone. The Wall itself has various smaller watch towers built into it at mile intervals, meaning a lot of the population of the Watchtowns concerns itself with sending staff and messages between these towers, which has ended up acting as a jury-rigged communications network. Thus, despite not being along the main roads of the Gird, the Watchtowns are easily travelled between and in constant contact with one another. They are also fairly well-off, as the Watchtowns function as a midway point between the Gird and the rich lands of the north, with merchants and nobles having to skirt the sides of the Wall, and thus travel through the Watchtowns, to go between either. Trying to climb over the wall and go straight down the middle of the intervening distance is inadvisable. Those who've tried have not returned. Four of the largest and most notable Watchtowns are: SHELDEMOIRE, home to the great Asylibrium, one of Efre's larger and most well-kept libraries. Though the Asylibrium's catalog is not completely extensive, the people of Sheldemoire have made it a point of pride of preserving many texts not available in the rest of Efre, as in the murky past Sheldemoire's founders managed to save many books and scrolls of their time that would have otherwise been lost. It is also the likeliest place to have any texts from the jewelled scholars of the northern lands. NORTHWAR,''' '''which deals with most of the Watchtown's military recruitment and is the first stop for northern merchants. Despite facing threats from both monstrous wildland raiders and things from inside the Wall, Northwar is also quite wealthy due to its trade route placement (and a place many mercenary companies pay to harden up fresh recruits.) RAINSHADE, along the east of the wall, which is the most prosperous of the Watchtowns. By a fluke of its placement along the wall Rainshade is afforded a reliable, temperate climate, and is a city of much leisure, art, and plenty. TEMPUS AGG, probably the town most pointable to as the 'leader' of the Watchtowns, although Northwar and Rainshade could contest this both military and economically. Sometimes termed the 'Tactical' Watchtown, Tempus Agg is home to the planners and politicians most concerned with the overall welfare of the Wall and the orderly runnings of its day to day affairs along all the watchtowers and guardposts. The locals are obsessed with keeping proper schedules, being late to something in Tempus Agg is a fairly grave insult.